IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reensy/v214y2021ics0951832021003410.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Precursors and startling lessons: Statistical analysis of 1250 events with safety significance from the civil nuclear sector

Author

Listed:
  • Ayoub, Ali
  • Stankovski, Andrej
  • Kröger, Wolfgang
  • Sornette, Didier

Abstract

We analyze the ETH Zurich open curated database of 1250 worldwide nuclear events focused on safety significance with potentials for precursors, presented in the companion paper. We find that major accidents always trigger a wave of “reactive†reporting as well as changes in regulatory or corporate management that last 5 to 6 years, mostly due to increased alertness, improved transparency, uncovering latent design errors, and heightened public pressure. The leading causes for multi-unit events are found to be external triggers and design issues, confirming the need to adapt PSAs to cover multi-unit events accordingly. Common-cause failures (CCF) are found to occur fairly frequently, at different levels, and can significantly erode the safety of the plant. From the lessons learned from this analysis, we suggest that frequent review of components design and operating procedures, employing different teams for testing and maintenance activities on redundant trains, and sharing operational experience between plants of similar designs, are some of the steps that should be taken in order to limit future occurrences of CCFs and beyond that further improve plant safety. We identify some quantitative signs of aging for plants after the age of 25. Our findings stress the need for larger recording, reliance, and sharing of operational data to support learning from experience and avoid reoccurrence of accidents and events.

Suggested Citation

  • Ayoub, Ali & Stankovski, Andrej & Kröger, Wolfgang & Sornette, Didier, 2021. "Precursors and startling lessons: Statistical analysis of 1250 events with safety significance from the civil nuclear sector," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:214:y:2021:i:c:s0951832021003410
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2021.107820
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832021003410
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ress.2021.107820?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zhang, Xiaoge & Mahadevan, Sankaran, 2021. "Bayesian network modeling of accident investigation reports for aviation safety assessment," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    2. Ayoub, Ali & Stankovski, Andrej & Kröger, Wolfgang & Sornette, Didier, 2021. "The ETH Zurich curated nuclear events database: Layout, event classification, and analysis of contributing factors," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    3. Khakzad, Nima & Khan, Faisal & Paltrinieri, Nicola, 2014. "On the application of near accident data to risk analysis of major accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 116-125.
    4. Modarres, Mohammad & Zhou, Taotao & Massoud, Mahmoud, 2017. "Advances in multi-unit nuclear power plant probabilistic risk assessment," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 87-100.
    5. Spencer Wheatley & Benjamin Sovacool & Didier Sornette, 2017. "Of Disasters and Dragon Kings: A Statistical Analysis of Nuclear Power Incidents and Accidents," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(1), pages 99-115, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Al-Douri, Ahmad & Levine, Camille S. & Groth, Katrina M., 2023. "Identifying human failure events (HFEs) for external hazard probabilistic risk assessment," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    2. Li, Xin & Chen, Chao & Hong, Yi-du & Yang, Fu-qiang, 2023. "Exploring hazardous chemical explosion accidents with association rules and Bayesian networks," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).
    3. Liu, Jiaxin & Yu, Deping & Yang, Taibo & Liu, Caixue & Wang, Guangjin & Liu, Xiaoming, 2023. "Discovering the causes for the change of the vibration characteristics of the core support barrel in PWR nuclear power plants: A combined investigation based on ex-core neutron noise analysis and nume," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    4. Ayoub, Ali & Stankovski, Andrej & Kröger, Wolfgang & Sornette, Didier, 2021. "The ETH Zurich curated nuclear events database: Layout, event classification, and analysis of contributing factors," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    5. Martínez-Galán Fernández, Pablo & Guillén López, Antonio J. & Márquez, Adolfo Crespo & Gomez Fernández, Juan Fco. & Marcos, Jose Antonio, 2022. "Dynamic Risk Assessment for CBM-based adaptation of maintenance planning," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephen Jarvis & Olivier Deschenes & Akshaya Jha, 2022. "The Private and External Costs of Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 1311-1346.
    2. Wen, Tao & Gao, Qiuya & Chen, Yu-wang & Cheong, Kang Hao, 2022. "Exploring the vulnerability of transportation networks by entropy: A case study of Asia–Europe maritime transportation network," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    3. Pan, Yue & Ou, Shenwei & Zhang, Limao & Zhang, Wenjing & Wu, Xianguo & Li, Heng, 2019. "Modeling risks in dependent systems: A Copula-Bayesian approach," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 416-431.
    4. Bhardwaj, U. & Teixeira, A.P. & Guedes Soares, C., 2022. "Casualty analysis methodology and taxonomy for FPSO accident analysis," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 218(PB).
    5. Kim, Man Cheol, 2022. "Systematic approach and mathematical development for conditional core damage probabilities under station blackout of a nuclear power plant," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    6. Zio, E., 2018. "The future of risk assessment," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 176-190.
    7. Shengli, Liu & Yongtu, Liang, 2019. "Exploring the temporal structure of time series data for hazardous liquid pipeline incidents based on complex network theory," International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    8. Yazdi, Mohammad & Khan, Faisal & Abbassi, Rouzbeh & Quddus, Noor & Castaneda-Lopez, Homero, 2022. "A review of risk-based decision-making models for microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) in offshore pipelines," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    9. Yoon, Jae Young & Kim, Dong-San, 2022. "Estimating the adverse effects of inter-unit radioactive release on operator actions at a multi-unit site," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    10. Zhipeng Zhou & Chaozhi Li & Chuanmin Mi & Lingfei Qian, 2019. "Exploring the Potential Use of Near-Miss Information to Improve Construction Safety Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-21, February.
    11. Keisuke Himoto, 2020. "Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling of Post‐Earthquake Ignition Probabilities Considering Inter‐Earthquake Heterogeneity," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(6), pages 1124-1138, June.
    12. Nazarizadeh, Farzaneh & Alemtabriz, Akbar & Zandieh, Mostafa & Raad, Abbas, 2022. "An analytical model for reliability assessment of the rail system considering dependent failures (case study of Iranian railway)," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    13. Wang, Fan & Li, Heng & Dong, Chao, 2021. "Understanding near-miss count data on construction sites using greedy D-vine copula marginal regression," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    14. Woo Sik Jung, 2021. "A Method to Avoid Underestimated Risks in Seismic SUPSA and MUPSA for Nuclear Power Plants Caused by Partitioning Events," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-13, April.
    15. Xiaohui Chen & Lin Zhang & Ze Zhang, 2020. "An integrated model for maintenance policies and production scheduling based on immune–culture algorithm," Journal of Risk and Reliability, , vol. 234(5), pages 651-663, October.
    16. Liu, Shengli & Liang, Yongtu, 2021. "Statistics of catastrophic hazardous liquid pipeline accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    17. Bhuyan, Kasturi & Sharma, Hrishikesh, 2022. "Reliability analysis & performance-based code calibration for slabs/walls of protective structures subject to air blast loading," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    18. Zhou, Di & Zhuang, Xiao & Zuo, Hongfu & Cai, Jing & Zhao, Xufeng & Xiang, Jiawei, 2022. "A model fusion strategy for identifying aircraft risk using CNN and Att-BiLSTM," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    19. Mandelli, D. & Parisi, C. & Alfonsi, A. & Maljovec, D. & Boring, R. & Ewing, S. & St Germain, S. & Smith, C. & Rabiti, C. & Rasmussen, M., 2019. "Multi-unit dynamic PRA," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 303-317.
    20. Guo, Qingjun & Amin, Shohel & Hao, Qianwen & Haas, Olivier, 2020. "Resilience assessment of safety system at subway construction sites applying analytic network process and extension cloud models," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:214:y:2021:i:c:s0951832021003410. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/reliability-engineering-and-system-safety .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.